CRITICAL MASS

Primed – New Painting in Tasmania

2010-09-01T08:58:00.002+10:00

Academy Gallery, UTAS
Curated by Catherine Wolfhagen

By Anneliese Milk

Following the straightforward premise of Tasmanian artists and their latest journey with paint, Primed is anything but simple. Curated by Catherine Wolfhagen, Primed brings together complex new works by diverse artists: Amanda Davies, Annika Koops, Jonathan Kimberley, Richard Wastell, Catherine Woo, Neil Haddon and Megan Walch. Beyond the common ground of Tasmania and the medium of paint, these works find a symbiosis that is at once surprising, challenging, and alienating.

The Academy Gallery proves to be the perfect host to this eclectic show, incorporating a different artist into each fold of the space. Amanda Davies’ latest offering reveals a preoccupation with anonymous, fragmented limbs. It is a curious moment rendered in Clear (2010) – stretched across a seat with one leg wrapped in plastic, an individual thrusts their hand out in time to obscure their face from the viewer forever. A recurring image in other Davies paintings, limbs that look as though they have been fashioned from plaster lie discarded in industrial spaces.

Continuing the theme of fragmentation, Megan Walch detaches her subjects from their surroundings – luminous jellyfish and fungi emerge from black canvases. An oriental plant mystically spirals upwards across seven black masonite panels in What goes up (2010). A glittery plinth presents itself at each new level – upon one, a tiny house of cards has been erected.

Annika Koops’ latest work challenges the viewer in its cold, disconcerting perfection. The sense of disconnection that is embraced in Walch and Davies’ work also appears in Koops’ paintings. Sleek, disembodied hairstyles are rendered on pure white canvases – Blue Black Bob (2010) and Long Black Hair (2010) become advertisements for desirable wigs.

The subject of Koops’ Clarity Jam (2010) averts her gaze from the viewer. She stares unnervingly at dead space beyond the frame. Replete with a flawless, peachy, high- cheek-boned beauty, she looks every bit the librarian or secretary from a by-gone era, primly fastened -up with an absurd pastel bow and a bun that would make a ballerina weep.

Showing until 17 October, Primed represents one fragment of the effervescent visual arts scene unfolding in Tasmania.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arts Tasmania.

A QUICK NOTE FROM IAN PIDD

2010-08-30T15:33:00.004+10:00

Hi all,

Just pausing for breath after the ride. Finally got around to reading your work. Great to revisit the gig so soon after. I intend to write some reflections in the next few days, once my brain function returns. We are all a bit like Zombies around here.

I especially want to write about the way that the Stompin work used a highly disciplining set of performance principles to completely undo the disciplining urge of the theatre. I also want to try and understand why the knitting on the Town Hall columns gave that building more authority, not less. I also want to think about how The Junc Room was so embraced by the locals (and really transformed a public square that is badly under-utilised), and how rock and roll is a force of nature when wielded by the Puta Madre Brothers. Lordy they are on to something!

It's been a really terrific few days and I do want to thank you all very much for the writing you have done. I'm expecting that once the delegates get home they might wish to contribute to this blog. I'd love to hear lot's and lot's of reflections on both the conference and the festival.

More soon.

Ian

WeTubeLIVE

2010-08-30T13:12:00.008+10:00

Stompin

By Lucy Wilson Magnus

There are a gazillion hours of YouTube. Too many for anyone to see if they devoted their life to it. Yet, Stompin’s WeTubeLIVE had me walking into a vast fantasy of live solo clips, where I felt so immersed and saturated, I had the impression I’d walked into the brain of YouTube and taken a dozen slippery slides down its pulsing cells.

This hour-plus walk around, look, listen, touch, smell and do as you please performance show-cased the individual YouTube desires of 45 teenagers, into a WeTube collective of humanity exposing humanity watching humanity recording humanity. It was a blast.

The audience was as much of the performance as the carefully nurtured Tube creations, each neatly packaged into white uniform squares laid out on the old flamboyant carpet of the Albert Hall. It was hilarious to watch the teenagers in the audience dancing and mouthing the words alongside the performances in the squares. It was almost an impulsive cliché to see how many audients took photos and videos with their iPhones, possibly already uploaded onto YouTube itself.

And then it stopped. Silence. A creeky floorboard spoke a nothing. And the stillness sustained. And finally broke, returning to the noise, to the layered sound bites, DJ decks, screams and air slowly released from a balloon. Somehow the room relaxed with the return to sound. That was cool. Yes it was all very cool. In concept, content, form and frame.

Well done Stompin. You nailed it. And the best bit is the experience you open up for Launceston’s young dancing people.

I went with my one year old. She hijacked my pen and note book and crawled around, watching and scribbling and listening and doodling. And this is what she scrawled…

Haircuts by Children

2010-08-29T21:14:00.004+10:00

Presented by Mammalian Diving Reflex

By Lucy Wilson Magnus

“Hair cuts by kids, free of charge,” they trumpeted in their blue and yellow uniforms outside the Studio Hair and Beauty in Charles Street, Launceston. Can you imagine the incredulity on pedestrians’ faces: what? A strange child with scissors, with my hair, and near my ears?! No way.

What a crazy idea.

The concept, by Toronto’s Darren O’Donnell and produced by Natalie De Vito, began four years ago, and is now well into several thousand haircuts by kids in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Norway, the US and Australia.

And as I walked through the door I discovered these were much more than haircuts. It’s a daring exercise in powerfully empowering young people.

De Vito says the reaction is always the same: the assumption that ten-year-olds can’t take on such responsibility. That’s why their workshops – this time with Grade 6 Mowbray Heights Primary School – begins with children’s rights and contextualising the project within a social practice. They ask, how is cutting hair an art project? And how art can create a political statement? And how such a happening can prompt people to think in different ways?

One outcome to these broader questions is a buzz of organised excitement. The salon was cranking with the noise and flurry of 20 kids running the joint – taking it in turns to welcome clients and take bookings, cut hair and assist, as well as managing a lemonade stall – all the while grooving to the louder-than-usual local radio station.

Launceston Trainer and Assessor Evon Gelekai had the job of teaching them how to cut hair, in three sessions. She initially doubted the whole idea, but surprisingly learnt that ten year olds “can do what they’re instructed, don’t forget a single thing, and they’re so careful with clients”.

I saw Allan cut a young girl’s hair with absolute precision, using fancy techniques including twirling her hair into four sections. I watched students welcome strangers and talk with them about their hair and execute the cut, colour and style. I heard a story about a boy who hardly speaks in class, and could hardly be shut up while doing a TV interview. Others who cried with terror before doing their first cut, as they’d never been trusted with such responsibility, and then felt so confident after their efforts that they want to do more more more.

I left the salon smiling, and kept seeing people around town with creative haircuts also smiling, and was inspired by this witty, artistic political act.

DRIVE and Passion

2010-08-29T08:42:00.011+10:00

by Gai Anderson
Big hARTs DRIVE , Young men and the art of Risk Taking
Ernesto Sirroli , Passion Entrepreneurship and the Rebirth of Local Economies
Saturday morning was one of contradictions for me – contradictions and possible connections.

The impassioned, entertaining and inspired Plenary with Ernesto Sirroli was a joy to hear – the story of his creative journey, and how he finds his own passion in facilitating the passion of others. Exciting stuff indeed – seemingly a golden pill for all of us middle class arty types to swallow: follow your passion. Who doesn’t want to do that?

Although I’m not sure that the art as product model fits so neatly as it does with fish, but he certainly got me thinking about where the passion lies in my own arts practice.

But what if the only passion you can find is behaviour so dangerous that your actual life is threatened by it?
Please forgive me if I have made a 90-degree turn here, but DRIVE, the powerful documentary about risk taking and young men on the NW coast of Tasmania has grabbed me by the heart again. Not the film itself this time, but the panel of young men involved in making the documentary – there, lined up on the stage together. Laughing with each other and shy in turns. Their vulnerability palpable in this setting – more scared of having to talk about themselves in public than of the life and death behaviours behind the wheel that the documentary illuminates so chillingly. Just ordinary boys sitting there – their lives on screen are such an indictment to the dysfunction of our society, but they have (at least temporarily) been saved from possible self-destruction by this inspired arts project.
Well done bighART!
Maybe art can’t save the world but …
DRIVE is the bravest piece of art I have seen for a very long time.

And then I notice that the audience of delegates is almost entirely women asking the questions of these boys on stage – where are all the men anyway?

And finally, I wonder if Ernesto has an answer. Where do these boys and the thousands more out there in rural Australia fit into his model? Is there a golden pill for them to swallow too?
I really hope the answer is Yes.

DRIVE is due to be screened on ABC later in the year, and hopefully for distribution all over the country.

Ernesto Sirolli: the one who gets it

2010-08-28T15:54:00.002+10:00

What do unemployed hippies, an Italian shoemaker, a nun, Western Australian fishermen and a man who knows nothing about business have in common? Passion, creativity and the makings of powerful storytelling.

Ernesto Sirolli's plenary address, Passion, entrepreneurship and the rebirth of local economies, had one simple but profound message: do what you want to do and find someone to do what you hate.
This straightforward message to the artists, community arts workers, business people and others in the audience was delivered lyrically, humorously and, like only the Italians can, with great gusto and feeling.

Sirolli narrated his experiences of developing entrepreneurs in Western Australia in the 1980s. He believes that the idea of an entrepreneur has been hijacked by corporate language which two-thirds of the population doesn't understand. He suggested that the first thing we need to do is reclaim the word 'entrepreneur' and its original, fundamental meaning: an entrepreneur is someone who 'gets it first'; who is innovative and courageous.

Through his engaging storytelling and grass-roots experiences, Sirolli urged the artists in the audience to dedicate their lives to finetuning their skills, to forget about trying to learn how to sell their work and to surround themselves with people they trust who can do that for them. That way, they return the gifts they have been given to the world.

And his belief about the universality of human experience? Every man and woman at any given time in their lives has a wish to better themselves. You don't have to take ideas into communities or tell people what to do - the people there already know what to do. You only have to take your passion and listen - not arrive with a 'briefcase of answers' - to help people do what they want to do.

What community wouldn't he inspire?

A Map of a Dream of the Future

2010-08-28T15:53:00.004+10:00

Lead artist: Nicholas Low

Tram Shed Function Centre, 4 Invermay Rd, Inveresk

By Anneliese Milk

Slipping behind a black curtain into the cold, dark shed, I try to adjust my eyes while simultaneously lurching forward across a narrow path of stepping stones. Strategically laid out in a cross-axis, the stones are surrounded by glistening water – an ankle-deep black pond. As I shuffle and sway my way through, I pray not to be the girl who lost her footing and ended up in the water.

The challenge of staying dry is augmented by the fact that one must negotiate one's way through one hundred suspended pot plants. Like leafy green marionettes, some thirty varieties of Tasmanian native plants hang from the ceiling at different heights. Some have come to rest completely in the water.

Having ventured out as far as I can, I return to the safety of solid ground in time to hear artist Nicholas Low explain the highly sophisticated ideology behind this surreal, compelling installation. The seemingly random positioning of the pot plants is revealed to be a strategic analysis of data. Each plant, in turn, represents a single Tasmanian school student and their responses to a survey conducted by Low concerning climate change. Who should be accountable for climate change? What is contributing to it? What does the future look like?

The higher the pot plant is suspended, Low explains, the more optimism the child holds for the future. As I cast my eyes up to the ceiling, I feel a sense of relief to see that the majority of plants are suspended somewhere in between.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arts Tasmania

Stumbling on Contraptions

2010-08-28T15:28:00.001+10:00

It's difficult to get people out to an event on a Winter evening. My local friend Alan tells me that it's difficult to get people out to arts events in Launceston at the best of times, and given similar experiences in Hobart, I can well believe it. That's why it's great that the Junction Festival is full of art you can stumble upon.
I've always been fond of the Pleiades constellation, a tiny jewel box in the Northern sky. Now the stars have multiplied and been brought to centre stage, enlightening a prominent tree.

Alternatively, I dare anyone to look at the split wood arranged in the shape of a fireplace without smiling, stepping closer and peering at what else has been built into its structure.

There's a cafe made from twisted willow; delightfully useless clockwork; umbrellas in the trees; a booth where you can let loose your reflections and projections. All this is just at Civic Square. A range of other images and installations have sprouted amidst arcades and public buildings. It might be argued that the signage could be improved to alert searchers, but perhaps this is part of the attraction; the pleasure of stumbling across artistic contraptions in the streets.

PANE

2010-08-28T14:22:00.003+10:00

Settling myself down on the pavement in the middle of Charles Street is not something I would normally do on a Friday afternoon but I felt I had a valid excuse. And so did the crowd gathering around me. We were there for Pane.
The large shopfront windows of established retailer Jessups Retravison became host to a delightful yet surprisingly complex performance. Set against the huge fifties-era photographic backdrops of Nicole Robson, seven middle-aged women began the first cycle of dance choreographed by Glen Murray.

What is so interesting about Pane is that this is essentially a two part performance; one show during the day and one during the evening. Though catching one or the other will not lessen the experience, Pane addresses a different perception with both. During the day, reflection is everything. The onlooking crowd become aware of their own voyeurism through the transparent mirror of glass. The dancers move behind and while we can see them, they can see us and we can also see ourselves. Without being directly an interactive experience the audience are collaborators in this performance and add to the complexity of the piece. At one point I was looking at the reflection of myself when a shift in light allowed the dancer more illumination and she came to the fore. A look of agony trapped on a female face was superimposed over mine.

Expressions of pain, joy, and at times playfulness are all evident as the dancers move skilfully throughout their routine. A return to the evening performance will see the same thing, however the internal lighting and atmosphere - not to mention the stunning backdrops and costumes - become more apparent and the true sense of entrapment in a suburban domestic lifestyle resonates with music and movement. This piece disguises itself in an era, yet I feel the underlying emotions are still very present in contemporary times.

The shopfront provides the aspect of looking in. However this isn’t perhaps the idyllic lifestyle that one would normally associate with the marketing used by shopfront displays. Pane is a clever, beautifully performed piece and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. Both times!

Herding like Penguins

2010-08-28T12:58:00.007+10:00

Having had my fill at least temporarily of the free flowing art and performance treats of the Festival and the Junc Room , today I donned my black coat to go underground into the conference itself. Like one of the frenetic penguins in the herd of delegates , intent and focussed on getting to the venue in time for the Plenary Session I dived straight in .
My conference day started exceptionally well with inspirational words of wisdom from Francois Matarasso who managed to explain so succinctly why we are all here at the conference really - how and why art and culture is so important to human existence :- art is the toolbox with which we question , interfere , change , grow and transform; art invites us to become conscious of what we think feel and do; art is a political right , a basic human need ; it allows us to communicate profound and complex meanings to each other – It is the Parliament of Dreams.
Wow, stirring stuff - this man is amazing. I think I’m beginning to get what this herding instinct is all about.

But then all this talking about Art had made me itch for more of the real stuff , so back to the streets I head …
The artistic imperative enacted before my eyes!

And sure enough just round the corner is yet a different group of herders – an audience crouching on the footpath, intently watching , as a curious group of older women perform in two shop front windows. Moving as dolls in their exquisite printed cardboard cut-out dresses with the staccato like grace. A flock of strange wind up birds locked in behind the glass, their expressive faces betraying some elusive narrative. Do they really want to get out ? Or are they happy there in the comfort of their public living rooms? Its mesmerising, enchanting this tiny private yet very public world they inhabit together.
PANE is the offering of MADE – Hobart’s Mature Aged Dance Experience

Did I tell you the one about…?

2010-08-28T07:41:00.005+10:00

Presented by Only Human Communication

Presenter: Moya Sayer-Jones

Friday 27 August, 9:00 am

By Anneliese Milk

There is something infinitely arresting about watching an unknown individual on film: imparting the quotidian, the tragic, the intimate details of their lives to the camera. It becomes both a forum for, and a record of, a person’s story – a validation of their self-worth.

Only Human Communication is an innovative company using story-based strategies to assist and celebrate the lives of people within not-for-profit organisations, government agencies and corporations. Only Human founder Moya Sayer-Jones is a firm believer that storytelling can bring us closer together. ‘Stories,’ she opines from the lectern, ‘are capable of turning us around and opening up the world in a different way.’

Turning to us, the anonymous crowd before her, Sayer-Jones swiftly and eloquently breaks us down as individuals. ‘So, who is here?’ she asks, and proceeds to fire off a series of questions that require us to stand if our answers are in the affirmative. Sayer-Jones’ point is thus: everyone has a story. Yet not everyone has the forum in which to tell it.

By listening to, validating and celebrating marginalised groups, Only Human create short films (under five minutes) of individuals’ stories. Produced through the simplest of means, Sayer-Jones explains that the films are ‘recorded only with what we can keep in our back pockets.’ In this case; the ubiquitous iPhone.

The Only Human philosophy of interviewing is clear-cut: ‘Find your heroes, ask the questions… don’t forget your ethics along the way… get it out there.’ At the same time, Sayer-Jones stresses the importance of valuing the process of the interview over the outcome. An interview can be beautiful, surprising and spontaneous, if one lets go of the agenda and embraces the story at hand.

Following the forum, I meander across to Only Human’s Story Lounge, temporarily located across from the Grand Chancellor Ballroom. Here, people can have their photograph taken and fastened to a postcard upon which they can then scrawl their names, their origins, their roles, their hopes. Awkwardly posing for a Polaroid picture, I too join the growing wall of individuals who find themselves in Launceston this chilly week in August. Another story added to the fold.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arts Tasmania.

WeTubeLOVE IT

2010-08-27T16:35:00.002+10:00

Sometimes joy comes softly and at other times it screams in your face.

So it is with WeTubeLIVE, a wild dance exhibition of simultaneous and solo performances by 50 young and largely untrained dancers interpreting their favourite YouTube clip.
Directed by Ben Speth for Stompin', WeTubeLIVE extraverts the voyeuristic fascination with the introverted expression of our 21st century technological lives - and there's no place to hide.

The audience is immersed in the performance, name-tagged and self-consciously visible to each other and the performers, wandering around the perimeter and through the rows of dancers as they yell, sing, dance, talk, stay still and silent, and otherwise perform their interpretation. Be warned: you may find yourself part of the performance.

The freedom to watch, interpret and have a dialogue with an artwork - even if it is only with yourself - is at the core of its transformative power. Of course we're self-conscious and exposed: we can't possibly anticipate or control the affect it may have on us. Whether we understand it or walk away more confused, WeTubeLIVE demonstrates how empowering it is to stand in your own space and express yourself without fearing the consequences.

WeTubeLIVE is chaotic, noisy, confronting, disturbing, humorous, joyous - everything the arts should be.

KP11: producing communities

2010-08-27T16:33:00.003+10:00

The Academy Gallery at the School of Visual and Performing Arts is currently host to four outstanding exhibitions, one of which is KP11: producing communities. There is diversity here in both medium and message.

KP11 is deals with the cultural hearts beating within communities across mainland Australia. The work (some of which dates back to the inception of the project in 2007) has been realised by 11 Australian art and cultural development organisations.

Each of the pieces in this exhibition are as unique as the communities they came from; however, this isn’t a tourism showcase. The art has been developed to complement the work being done by the organisations themselves, developing artistic cultural exchanges. Evident in every community are the challenges facing the people who are creating it. The exhibition encompasses social issues surrounding youth, the elderly, disability, life, death and ethnic background – to name but a few.

Here, the outcomes are represented by sculpture, photography, sound, digital installation, interactive media, drawing and painting. What you will see is not definitive snapshots of people and place that make up the communities. This is about the complex relationships of time, place, each other and the development of understanding within our society.

Jane Franklin: An Examined Life

2010-08-27T16:09:00.001+10:00

Presented by Silkweed
Albert Hall, Thursday 26th August

Lady Jane Franklin serves as a figure of fascination as much as anyone in Tasmanian history. Unlike the fondly remembered bushrangers, she was a member of the establishment, but her reforming instincts have endeared her to a wide range of Tasmanians.
This is reflected in the way she continues to be commemorated in the arts. Richard Flanagan's most recent novel, Wanting, explored the darker, frustrated side of Lady Franklin's life: her relationship with the aboriginal girl Mathinna and her attempts to resurrect her husband's reputation following the unsavoury revelations that followed his final arctic voyage.

The musical ensemble Silkweed have taken a lighter touch. Whilst acknowledging the tragic notes that appear later in her life, Jane Franklin's story becomes a kind of parable of emancipation. Their multidisciplinary approach uses music, historical content, projected slides, dramatic re-enactments and extracts from Lady Franklin's journals to provide a short biographical journey; from her hunger for learning as a young woman, through her remarkable travels, her marriage to Sir John Franklin and the reforms she attempted to initiate in Van Diemen's Land.

In a performance such as this, it is difficult to balance these components effectively. While Sara Cooper, assisted by the quality of writing in the journals, brings the character of Jane Franklin to life, the other disciplines provide limited additional appreciation of their subject. Yes, the historical reflections set the journals in their context, but the songs trouble the pacing of the show and the writing and performance of the dramatic elements lack polish and depth.

The production could perhaps have been more successful with a more restrained approach. Focusing on the journals and historical components, with accompaniment from Silkweed's chamber-folk style music, may have made for a more reflective performance.

Zero Project

2010-08-27T12:02:00.001+10:00

I speak to Tina, who is busy stripping leaves from lengths of Phragmites Australis, the common reed. Now that I know what they are, I see just how common they are, upright and swaying in the cool westerly wind gusting at the foot of the Tamar River. A few reeds hang from string and click away like knitting needles. Something she prepared earlier.
Tina is working on the Zero Project, an art installation named for its level of funding. Using local and recycled materials, the project is settling into King's Park. Spirals of pinebark decorate the grass; there are driftwood structures at the water's edge.

We discuss the lay of the land. You can barely see the installation until you are right on top of it. This is particularly true of the spirals, which titillate your eyes; there is a strange tension in only ever acquiring suggestions of the whole.

It is amusing, walking from the park, to see the pinebark piles surrounding young trees by the edge of the road. Are they part of the installation, or its inspiration? At the very least, they provide another series of the 'zeros' that are springing up mockingly in the park.

Frustrated funding need not always hold up the determined. Tina continues stripping the reeds. It will be a long night with soldering iron and string.

The amazing Ross Byers and his mercurial kinetic carts

2010-08-27T09:29:00.002+10:00

A rain-soaked square bustling with people. A fire-engine red circus tent billowing in the winter squall, inhaling, exhaling, canvas, people, music. Ice-cream-coloured umbrellas, confetti-scattered in trees, swoop and tremble overhead. A lumbering wooden cart, wagon-wheeled, imposes its presence into the scene - its open caravan crowned with a Mad Hatter's teapot, tea cosy-knitted and towering three metres into the bristling sky. Its companion - a giant purple flower, a triffid, sprouting from the front. Is this Launceston? The 21st century? A chimera?
He appears shaking a totem, a Medusa-head of mythical creatures peeking and poking this way and that, snaked in their parti-coloured woolly costumes. Not a court jester, for he is the one holding court. Mercurius, maybe, the patron of travellers; a messenger, but also a trickster. Coyote. And like the Pied Piper calling his children, a swell of youngsters suddenly appear, surrounding him to follow, to skip, to chant.

"Who wants to carry the totem?" he calls and in the call is a challenge, a duty. Dozens of anticipatory fingers stretch forward to pluck the honour. "You must call out, 'hear yea', hear yea'," he commands and as the chant rings out across the square he picks up the yoke and starts pulling the colossal rig like an equipage.

And everything is in an inharmonious motion on top of the cart, as if tinkered with by da Vinci, Leunig, Dr Seuss. Teapot rocking. A piston can of Home Brand coconut cream, empty now, rising and falling. A lazy susan spinning a merry-go-round cardboard whale, a hand-made miniature replica cart made from an old cabinet and fencing wire, a juxtaposed computer-generated prototype of the same. And like dancers taking centre stage on a revolving dance floor, more imaginary creatures rock back and forth in time to the unsounded music that only they can hear.

Is this sculpture? Architecture? Engineering? Theatre? It is all of these and yet no genre will translate the experience.

This is magic. Conjuring. Fantasy. Artistry. This is Ross Byers and his Tour de Clarendon Kinetic Carts. Prepare to be spellbound.

Dying to become men

2010-08-27T09:23:00.001+10:00

"No young man believes he shall ever die," wrote English essayist William Hazlitt way back in the early 19th century, and watching Drive by Big hART Directors Bronwyn Purvis and Telen Rodwell, it seems nothing has changed.

This is gritty reality film-making that grabs you by the heart and doesn't stop squeezing, even when the lights go up. Through close-up camera work, we are invited into the uncomfortable intimacy of grief shared by the mates, girlfriends, mothers and brothers of the young men who have died on Tasmania's north-west coast roads as they tell their stories. Too many stories.

Every detail is imprinted and related - from their lives before the crash to the moments leading up to the crash, the crash itself and its aftermath - and the anguish is palpable. We see a dark blue P-plated station wagon crumpled from its fatal crash and it looks like a hearse. "That's the car I killed my best mate in and the dog," says a 24 year old man. "How do I carry it?" he asks. "I carry it like a champion, that's how."

Drive shows us young men killing themselves, each other and other people on the roads, and it is relentless and compelling in its storytelling. It's easy to blame the speed, the drugs, the alcohol, the reckless risk-taking behaviour of these blokes - until we understand what sits beneath that: these are young men who are desperate to get as far away as fast as possible from where they are. They see their cars as their way to gain control of their lives and become men.

We talk about young men's sense of invincibility. What we need to talk about is their vulnerability: this film is filled with absent fathers. "What do people in heaven cry about?" a young woman asks her toddler son at the end of the film. He replies, "They cry about their sons."

A Map of a Dream of the Future

2010-08-27T08:19:00.002+10:00

Imagine how climate change will affect our life eighty years in the future. What will happen? How will we deal with it?

In fact, the question needs to be asked, can we deal with it? Eighty years from now will see the issues being tackled by another generation. It is the children of today who will build upon ideas and formulate solutions to ensure our survival through a changing world. Having said that, how do our children feel about climate change?

A Map of a Dream of the Future will give you the answer.

In an incredibly immersive experience, artist Nicolas Low with the University of Tasmania’s School of Environment and Geography’s Associate Professor Elaine Stratford have brought together a contemporary art installation that represents data collected from one hundred Tasmanian students from grades five and six. The students were provided with an education kit and then given the opportunity to respond to questions about climate change.

Data of any kind can have a stigma attached: we expect dots on a page or numbers on a chart. The beautiful thing about this data is that it is represented in the form of a three-dimensional living graph suspended in space. A hanging garden made entirely from Tasmanian native species that accurately pinpoints the thinking of each individual child. Even the plants themselves have been specifically chosen based on their resilience and then assigned accordingly to the respective data.

As I moved through the dimly light space, treading carefully across the axis, it became clear how many of our children are optimistic, how many are pessimistic, how many will rely on technology and how many feel that the solutions lay in a return to nature.

Powerful, beautiful, surreal and factual.

A must-see.

Sheer Pleasure

2010-08-26T22:53:00.002+10:00

If there is one thing you should NOT miss at the Festival for the sheer pleasure of the experience it is Stompin’s WeTubeLIVE.100 performances staged by fifty young people live and simultaneously – re-enactments of their favourite YouTube clips inside metre square stages, marked out in rows on the floor, their own individual IPods pumping through little speakers.

Wandering through the Albert Hall’s magnificence in between and around the performances I think, it’s wild, it’s mad, it’s endless, like a hoard of the most outrageous buskers gone feral. These young performers are focussed, engaged ,alive and having so much fun inside the private world of their little squares.

Sometimes reminiscent of a 19th century mad house scene with girls screaming, boys talking to themselves, manically laughing and frantically dancing , but equalled by moments of exquisite beauty – a girl painstakingly folding an origami dove , a boy in a bear suit playing gentle folk songs on guitar , a ballerina intensely focussed on her meticulous moves. Solos, duets, multiples, sometimes they all stop together – silent, resting, still – only to start up again like a flock of chattering wild birds.

The performance is constantly changing, it is chaos, it is enchanting, it is disturbing, it is SO focussed and it is hilarious all at the same time. And the audience are grinning from ear to ear as they wander in amongst the chaos. It’s such a great idea, there is so much more to see than you can possibly take in at one showing …I think I’ll have to come again tomorrow.

DRIVE

2010-08-26T22:36:00.005+10:00

When is the truth too hard to look at up close?
In 1915 most young men in Australia died at Gallipoli,. We all know that, we’ve heard the story, the details, seen the visceral brutality of it.

In 2010 most young men in Australia die in high speed single vehicle car crashes - we probably know that too, in theory at least. But in DRIVE, the documentary created with and about a group of young North West Tasmanian men, their families and friends,
the brutal truth of that statistic slams you right in the face in a way I have not before experienced .

This brave and visually beautiful film interlaces breathtakingly honest close up interview and voiceover, with evocative images of landscape, action, work , life and family. It dives deep below the surface of these young men’s lives - into their passions and their fears, their loves and their hates, to show what drives such reckless and often devastating behaviour. At the same time it goes way beyond the clichés of our normal understandings.

Presented by Big hART, this film should be compulsory viewing for all young Tasmanians.

It screens again at Saturday at 7.45 am, followed at 9 am by a special Panel on risk - taking young men and their intersection with Art at 9 am.
The film also screens again on Sunday afternoon at 2pm.

WeTubeLive

2010-08-26T15:08:00.003+10:00

WeTube. WOW.

The world is in reverse with fifty people taking video pop-culture and turning it into live performance. Fifty young people in their own little white-bordered square acting, dancing, miming, freaking out, spacing out; completely self-initiated and composed.
The overall concept is created and directed by Ben Speth , with assistance from Becky Hilton, Emma Porteus and Adam Wheeler. But really this about the teenagers working their arses off for an hour and exposing themselves to close-quarter scrutiny. Observers are given name tags, making them less able to hide behind the anonymity of being in an ‘audience’ because, as we mill around amongst the performers, perhaps everyone feels more equal knowing each others’ names.

Every ten minutes there is a rest period where performers ‘refresh’, while the huge digital clock keeps time. The old-world feel of the Albert Hall meets the twenty-first century in a big old way. And, like the internet, it seems to never stop.

Both the concept and delivery of WeTubeLIVE is exceptionally good, made even better by the fact that it could be done in a million ways again, in that many places again.

WeTubeLIVE is an absolute must-see, at least once.

Presented by Stompin
Albert Hall

rrala manta manta

2010-08-26T12:40:00.003+10:00

Achingly beautiful.
Not managed, not contrived, not censored.

These are words used by Frank Panucci at the opening of rrala manta manta to describe the works on display by a host Tasmanian Aboriginal artists.

And it is so true.

Leonie Dickson’s kelp satchel combines a sophisticated merging of the ancient artistic skills with contemporary context. The cascading curtain of dried kelp by Vicki West has the ethereal effect of making the viewer feel like they are walking through the gnarled stalks of the kelp forest transported from underwater to land.

Len Maynard’s In loving memory is a beautiful object filled with the dark sorrow of the brutal past, contrasted by Leonie Dickson and Verna Nichol’s gloriously hopeful Nations United.

This exhibition deserves it’s place as a key feature of this festival for its artistic excellence, and its importance in highlighting the transit of generations of artists.

Rrala manta mnata is on at the Design Centre.

Haircuts by Children

2010-08-26T12:08:00.003+10:00

‘We are going to teach children basic hair cutting. On real people!’

Judy Goss, owner of Studio Hair and Beauty, approached Evon Gelekai, trainer and assessor with thirty years experience in hairdressing, with this proposition.
The result is twenty one children aged ten to twelve years who have spent two weeks learning how to snip, style, colour and clip hair.

The kids, understandably, are keen as mustard and being taught by professionals how to create a style and wield the tools to achieve it. The styles are wild and bold, one looks like tagging on a head instead of a wall.

Fifty brave souls are booked to go under the blade over the next three days and they will receive royal treatment from a team of budding hairdressers who take it in turns to style and assist. If you pass them in the street, you will know who they are — these are the fashion makers of tomorrow and they know how to get your attention!

Presented by Mammalian Diving Reflex
Haircuts at Studio Hair and Beauty
185 Charles St
Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Day one -Wednesday

2010-08-26T11:21:00.004+10:00

Driving down the hill into Launceston, strange combination of stunning landscape, fading federation and post industrial bleak hits me intensely for a moment, but passes quickly as the rain closes in around the fluorescence of the park. Its ancient old trees and fanciful iron gates bedecked with a square of fluffy knitting hanging wistfully from the gate - and there on the path a lounge room offers me (a very squelchy) couch of faded velvet on which to sit and contemplate. It seems I’ve arrived. My portal to the world of Junction has opened and I’m off and running.

Down the street dropping into meenah mienne, the tiny gallery space filled with art leads back into a room of friendly children and elders, drawing and playing with clay.
A cup of tea and I’m off across the bridge to Inveresk.

KP11-producting communities at the Academy of Arts
Stories , paintings, videos, sculptures sound bites and objects, from community art projects set across the country– a womens’ prison, an intellectually disabled group, at risk youth, indigenous communities, a neonatal unit…and more.

I could spend hours here, but am immediately grabbed by…Beyond Empathy – postcards from the edge, made with communities from Australia’s most disadvantaged postcodes.
Hand wrought rusted iron post boxes like small cupboards that have just landed, open to reveal drawers, objects and video screens – snippets of projects, of communities, details of lives. A can of spray paint and prints of multi coloured grafittied walls – a video of “The story of how footy started”- a pair of runners sliced in half.

Its endless, it’s beautiful, it’s entrancing. These tiny detailed worlds opening up to me, and just as I feel satiated and about to move on, words of wisdom revolve around, to tumble out to summarize, to root me to the spot. “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home “…

Well that’s got me thinking - Community Art, amazing and yes that’s why we are all here after all.

Sex, Death and a Cup of Tea

2010-08-26T10:35:00.001+10:00

Four playwrights were immersed in four of the most regional of Tasmanian communities, - Zeehan, Swansea, Miena and King Island - and four very different plays address the dilemmas of transient populations, of people who leave and never come back, of people who settle down to die.

The strongest of the plays Sex, Death and Fly-fishing, is a powerful depiction of the relationship between a young visitor to a freezing highland community and a dying, elderly man who has found his rest in fishing. Carefully balanced between narration and dialogue, Adam Grossetti's short play is an affecting vision of a lake's apotheosis in quiet, willing eyes.

The other plays have their strengths: an easy command of vernacular in Swansea; the humour of an overly-enthusiastic swimmer (or is he a seal?) who sets a relationship back on track on King Island; but one doesn't feel they quite inhabit the towns as members of the local population. They may be passing through, spending some time, but they're not quite locals yet.

Poetry Wall

2010-08-26T10:29:00.004+10:00

Six poets have reacted in wildly different ways to the phrase ‘Open Camouflage’. Tim Thorne’s bleak treatise on modern warfare; Joy Elizabeth’s chilling true account of the abuse of female international students; Ben Walter's football oval on an autumn afternoon…

A new and sweet view of the much-maligned snail by Esther Ottaway will show this humble stalwart in a whole new light:

You’re a show regardless of audience, a full house,
Your scribble of trails, morning reviews of your travels.

The commissioned works mentioned above, plus two more by Liz Winfield and Joe Frank, are tucked away on a far wall and deserve more space and exposure. But the poetry wall, painted by Laura Watts offers a flowing skirt of words with a blackboard opportunity for anyone to add their own. And through this, Launceston’s famous poetry festival has colonised a permanent corner of the CBD.

This chilly Wednesday afternoon poetry reading was a lovely start to Junction, a reminder that the beautiful economy of poetic words is a joy best enjoyed when read by the poet, with their own voice and inflection as soundtrack to the images they inspire.

The Poetry Wall is at the entrance to the Centreway Arcade between Brisbane and Paterson St

Their Poetry

2010-08-24T16:41:00.000+10:00

My head is plunged continuously into poetry. There's a festival in early October which demands new material and I'm repeatedly slapping the afternoons trying to get it all together.

But this week belongs to a different festival, Junction, and my attention has shifted towards it. To the theatre performances, the art exhibitions, the music, the dance. To the poetry built by others.

It's a relief, it's a pleasure and I'm looking forward to being drawn into their worlds.

Junction Twenty Ten

2010-08-24T16:32:00.001+10:00

A junction is a place where several routes or lines meet, link or cross each other. I imagine a train horn blaring and railway lines criss-crossing over, traffic routes, motorways and canals all jumbled up together. I’d not thought of Launceston as a junction. But for five days it’s becoming a Junction of Art, with a big spoon stirring up the already small and spirited arts community with a national and international influx. Planes, puppets, cars and costumes, music, boats and bicycle wheels, installations, art art art and footsteps - are all heading to the north-east. To Tasmania’s left eye.

From remote isolated plains. From busy populated hubbubs. Everyone carrying a postcard-sized 53-page program booklet. To join and intersect. To listen and see what happens when they criss-cross over each other. And feel what happens in the junction of their hearts and minds.

A purler of an installation

2010-08-24T14:27:00.005+10:00

Jump into the rabbit hole (aka Town Hall Reception Room) and step into the still life of 1950s suburbia in The Knitting Room.

This is Andy Warhol meets Alice in Wonderland and the CWA, and I love every woolly inch of it. Artists Robyn Carney, Gwen Egg and Shirley Johnson have worked with the residents and community of Uniting Aged Care homes to knit, stitch and crochet a life-sized recreation of a 1950s home in all its colourful and iconographic glory. Coming from an era of 'make-do and mend', these craftspeople have taken up the call to 'knit your bit' to giddy extremes, with life-sized structures, people and objects skilfully and magically - and sometimes humorously - created for a nostalgic experience which is as visually rich and whimsical as it is slightly surreal.

Pass through the picket-fenced front yard, complete with its yellow letterbox, standard roses and milk bottles waiting collection, through the always-open front door, and you immediately see how objects can reveal culture, personality and status. This is post-war working-class Australia when Dad fell asleep in front of the fire, beer in hand and Fido at his feet; when there was always a homemade fresh-cream sponge on the table (alongside the iced vovos) and a cake tin on top of the fridge to store it; when high-art meant ceramic swallows flying across the lounge-room wall; when everyone had a quarter-acre block with its boxed vegie patch, full to the brim with roly-poly carrots, cauli and beetroot, and a curler-clad neighbour popping over the fence for a chat.

The Knitting Room is pop art virtual reality and a joy for anyone who yearns for a charming trip into to a sweeter, simpler time in our fair isle's history. But it's more than that: it reminds us that art has a role in creating memory, identity, and place; and that our community elders deserve recognition and respect as carriers of our history and stories.

Cast-on The Knitting Room to your list of must-see exhibitions and experience how the 1950s are alive and well in the yarn-bombed Reception Room of Launceston's Town Hall.

Between Worlds

2010-08-23T18:45:00.002+10:00

Flying in from one island to another
From the far north to the far south
From a small grass roots community festival in Eastern Indonesia to the great National Regional Arts Conference in Launceston.
From the third to the first we say
Floating between worlds, between head spaces, between cultures and perspectives,
I am slowly landing…wondering about the ways that art infiltrates, entwines, accumulates and filters through our lives and minds in these very different places.
Bringing people together , circling , embracing , stimulating ,confronting.
Art as celebration, art as life, art as food for the soul, arts as food for thought, art as tradition, art as liberation , art as culture.
Junction 2010 seems like it might be all of these at once and more.
Can’t wait till Thursday.

Avenues

2010-08-08T19:40:00.007+10:00

Junction 2010 is sure to delight and fascinate with a smorgasbord of creative expression that will be realised by an impressive line-up of artists over five days. While Junction will offer a dazzling array of events, exhibitions, workshops and performances it will also offer something perhaps less obvious. A challenge.

This is an opportunity for people that grace the streets of this beautiful city to explore the possibilities of art and to be challenged by perceptions of artistic expression through inventive and imaginative processes. The outcomes of these interactions will certainly be touching.

Art is everywhere, from the comfort of a willow seat at the Wild Willow Café to the less public arrangement at The Outhouse. A conversation at the Mode Café is more likely to be the audible crafting of a letter to a long lost love, or perhaps a dictation requesting the return of a long overdue DVD from that friend who promised they would watch it that night.

Junction will undoubtedly offer experiences that will entertain and amuse yet it will also offer avenues for exploration that will confront and provoke further investigation. I can’t wait.

Yep, art is everywhere. Just like my hair… So, I plan to participate in experience that will live with me long after the Junc Room is disassembled. I am laying my locks to the mercy of a ten year old. Art has no boundaries and as I will discover first-hand, no age limits either! Bring it on.

Eyes Wide Open

2010-08-06T16:34:00.002+10:00

If art has the capacity to 'wake you up', as Ian Pidd, (Artistic Director for Junction 2010) suggests, Launceston is about to become a city of cultural insomniacs. Copious amounts of culture, co-mingling and conversation (not to forget coffee in the Junc Room!) will be keeping me awake as our conventional public spaces are arts-activated and Launceston is transformed into a theatre of social action.

I can't wait to see how Junction is going to disturb our mundane city spaces, and see the way we re-experience them when they are activated as flashpoints of raw art spaces. My hot spots include the big top Junc Room in Civic Square, with its cabaret, theatre, circus, food and wine, and art as cultural ballast to the political sway around it; WeTubeLIVE by Stompin in the gracious Albert Hall as technology hits tradition; and Car-cophony which validates a blockie route as culturally sound.

I'm booked and ready to go to a few of my 'favourites', but I'm also going to allow myself to be seduced by the unexpected, the whimsical, the absurd and the beautiful in this once-in-a-generation festival, so that I might be startled into experiencing Launceston in a new and more enlivening way.

GET INVOLVED...

2010-08-04T22:30:00.000+10:00

Start checking out the program, become a blog follower and get involved in the discussion about the role that the arts has in regional communities throughout Australia.

Tell us what you are looking forward to experiencing at the festival.

Blog stations will be in our headquarters - see Information - and there will be a blogging station at the Grand Chancellor.

Going Home for Arts Sake

2010-08-04T20:06:00.003+10:00

It's quite an exciting prospect returning to my birth place to participate in a national arts conference and accompanying festival. Especially as I left more than 20 years earlier in search of a more culturally diverse existence. Alot can happen in 20 years. So I am eagerly gathering notebooks and testing pens for the scrawling to come when I join fellow WriteResponsers as we gobble up as much art, theatre, music and culture as we can get our hands and heads on.

Leafing through the Junction festival guide, I am especially looking forward to what MADE's choreographer and director, Glen Murray has created with PANE. There was such a buzz about his last show in Hobart, and I love the thought of shop front performance.

I remember reviewing the readings of Sex, Death and a Cup of Tea, under the title Two Pairs of Shorts at the last Ten Days on the Island and I loved it. So I am keen to see how the four works by playwrights; Adam Grossetti, Finegan Kruckemeyer, Debra Oswald and Sue Smith have been developed and realised.

For now it's back to the program for more reading. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you and hearing what you thought.